The sound of love is out of tune
by smaragdbird
Summary: Tristan and Galahad are immortal but their different worldviews make it impossible for them to stay together despite Tristan's best attempts to convince Galahad to his point of view. Centuries later he finds that Galahad has found a man who has nearly convinced him that the world is not as black and white as he once thought. (Tristan/Galahad, Will Graham/Hannibal) immortality


No one can explain it. No one knows the reason why Tristan and Galahad can recover from any wound and never change will all of their friends do.

Arthur stands at Lancelot's grave and calls it a blessing.

Galahad, years later, his eyes red from crying and his voice hoarse from screaming whispers it's a curse over Gawain's grave.

Gawain is only the first to go, not a young man anymore but also not old yet. He dies in a battle against the Saxons and he's remembered as a brave man.

Tristan rests his hand on Galahad's shoulder. "If you don't let it go it will never become easier."

"This isn't supposed to be easy", Galahad says and turns away.

/

Arthur dies in battle as well. So does Guinevere even if history forgets about it.

In the end the Saxons win and conquer Britain just like the Romans before them and the Woads before them when the world was young.

Bors dies as an old man, well respected and admired, surrounded by his children and children's children and their children. Although Vanora follows him more than a decade later in Tristan's memories of those years Galahad's eyes are always red-rimmed.

"Come with me", Tristan says after the last of their friends has passed away. "We can go to Sarmatia if you want. We can go anywhere." He's becoming restless to find a place that is not as drenched in sadness and loss as this one.

Galahad shakes his head. "Sarmatia is gone."

"The steppe is still there. Places don't go away." It has been less than fifty years since they discovered that they cannot die and Tristan doesn't know better. He hasn't seen rivers change and islands disappear yet.

"But the people aren't there anymore."

"There not here either." He doesn't understand why Galahad clings to this place like he once clung to the memory of Sarmatia.

"I will bear this curse like the punishment it's meant to be", Galahad whispers.

"You're a coward", Tristan says because he sees Galahad grey and cold when he wants him angry and burning with life.

"I'm not the one who's running."

Tristan has nothing to say to that. He's the scout. He runs ahead so that the others may follow safely. Sooner or later Galahad will follow him. He always has.

/

Europe is chaos and blood and the old world breaking apart at the seams. Tristan is right at the centre of this maelstrom of bodies and death. That is the comforting part: People die. Sooner or later they die and Tristan can do nothing to change it.

It's more than a century later when things have settled down for now that he returns to Britain. He finds Galahad easily enough because Galahad is like a beacon that calls him home in a storm.

Galahad lives in a fishing village with a wife and a few children. He's not surprised to see Tristan and Tristan knows that Galahad can feel him as much as he can feel Galahad.

"She's pretty", Tristan says once they're alone. They sit at the shore, looking east where, Tristan knows, a new threat is growing like the Saxons once were.

"I love her", Galahad replies and he's speaking the truth. "I always love them."

"You never liked pain. Why are you so keen on it now?"

"It reminds me I'm human. And that being human is something precious."

Tristan sighs, leans in and kisses Galahad. "It'd be so much easier if you could just accept that people die and it doesn't matter how or why."

Galahad shakes his head. "Never." But he kisses Tristan back.

/

The sky is blue.

People die.

Tristan loves Galahad.

Galahad loves Tristan.

Tristan leaves and fights.

Galahad stays and loves.

And they always come back to each other.

/

They dance this dance for centuries on end. Galahad moves to the next town or the next country to start a new life every decade or so while Tristan scours about the world. It's not that he doesn't have companions, that he doesn't love people beside Galahad but when they die he never feels the agonising, paralysing grief that Galahad goes through every time.

It's a familiar, comfortable pattern that is the only stability in either of their lives, a status quo spanning more than one and a half millennia until, until…

It's 2013. 1546 years have passed since they discovered that they cannot die. Galahad lives under the name Will Graham in the US, Tristan has had enough for now of fighting in a place that has nothing but sun and sand.

He returns and Galahad is different, changed by the man at his side. A man whose face Tristan recognises as his own if he could age. A man who cares less about people than Tristan has ever done with the exception of Galahad.

"I'd say he's handsome but that would be narcissistic", Tristan says when Galahad comes finally home. He throws a knife at him and it lands in the doorframe next to Galahad's head, right where Tristan wanted it to land.

"Because you're usually so modest", Galahad snaps.

"A pity he will die."

Galahad yanks the knife out of the door, crosses the room and holds it to Tristan's throat. "If anything happens to him I will never let you come near me again."

"You don't know what he is."

"He's not you." Galahad grits out between clenched teeth.

Tristan lets out a hollow laugh because this man with his face has somehow gotten under Galahad's skin like no one else ever managed to do and suddenly he's afraid who Galahad could become if he ever let go of his precious humanity. If he would still be Galahad afterwards.

"I didn't mean to imply that", Tristan says and Galahad takes the knife away from his throat.

It clatters on the floor.

Galahad cups his face and kisses him like he has only kissed him before the curse: angry, passionate, burning with life. The fuck right there on Galahad's cheap kitchen floor.

"I need you to leave", Galahad says afterwards.

Galahad has never asked him to leave before.

"Galahad –"Tristan begins but Galahad shakes his head.

"Will, I'm Will now."

Tristan gathers his clothes and gets dressed.

"Never let go. Don't you ever let no matter how much easier life would seem", he tells Galahad as a goodbye. They kiss like they will never see each other again and when Tristan looks at Galahad's house from a distance, all lights are on and it shines against the night sky like a beacon, but Tristan knows it's not for him.

A hawk's cry cuts through the silence and Tristan tears himself away from the sight. He turns around and leaves Will Graham's house behind.


End file.
